A NATION CHALLENGED: THE EGYPTIAN STUDENT

A NATION CHALLENGED: THE EGYPTIAN STUDENT; Grateful Egyptian Is Freed As U.S. Terror Case Fizzles

By JANE FRITSCH

Published: January 18, 2002

On the afternoon of his 31st day in a federal lockup, Abdallah Higazy was hustled from his isolation cell and rushed before a judge. There was a dizzying flurry of activity, and when it was over, Mr. Higazy held out his arms so his guards could snap the handcuffs back onto his wrists.

The guards shook their heads. Mr. Higazy was free to go.

If Mr. Higazy was confused, it was understandable. Just five days earlier, he had been offered up by prosecutors and the news media as a mysterious and dangerous new terrorism suspect, a young Arab who had had an aviation radio in his hotel room with a view of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Last Friday, when he was charged with lying to federal agents and brought to court, he was deemed so dangerous that he was ordered held without bail.

But it was all a misunderstanding.

It turned out that Mr. Higazy was exactly what he said he was, a 30-year-old student who entered the United States in August on a student visa to study computer engineering. The organization that sponsored him had placed him in the room at the Millenium Hotel, and he had never even seen the pilot's radio that the federal agents said must belong to him and that he must be lying about.

The case began to unravel on Monday, when the real owner of the radio, a private pilot and American citizen, came forward to claim it. He had left it in his room on the 50th floor of the Millenium Hotel, one floor below Mr. Higazy's.

Giddy with relief and his newfound freedom, Mr. Higazy spoke with reporters yesterday across the street from the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan where he had been freed on Wednesday night with $3 for subway fare. He was remarkably sanguine about his experience, and wanted it known that he thanks the United States government, the F.B.I., his court-appointed lawyer, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry and the jail guards who were his keepers.

''I'm happy,'' said Mr. Higazy, unable to suppress yet another grin and pledging to return to school in Brooklyn. ''I've got no complaints.''

But his lawyer, Robert S. Dunn, took a dimmer view of the situation, which he views as a cautionary tale for a new era of antiterrorism frenzy. ''America needs to take a deep breath and realize that a lot of people are being swallowed up in this system,'' Mr. Dunn said.

There was little response yesterday from the United States attorney's office in Manhattan, which brought the charges against Mr. Higazy. Last Friday, government prosecutors asserted that Mr. Higazy and his radio were ''potentially a quite significant part'' of an investigation into ''the most serious crime in the nation's history.''

Yesterday, the prosecutor's office issued only a written statement that said, ''As the government's submission to the court makes clear, we're continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the radio in Mr. Higazy's room.''

But in a letter delivered to Magistrate Judge Frank Maas on Wednesday, Dan Himmelfarb, an assistant United States attorney, explained what happened. In October, the F.B.I. was contacted by the Millenium Hotel, whose employees had been conducting an inventory of items left behind by guests when the hotel was evacuated on Sept. 11.

An employee told the F.B.I. that he had found the radio in the safe in Mr. Higazy's room on the 51st floor, along with Mr. Higazy's passport and several other items. The radio, marketed for use by pilots, enables them to communicate air-to-air and air-to-ground with other pilots.

''In subsequent interviews, Mr. Higazy denied, seemingly inexplicably, that he had ever possessed the radio,'' Mr. Himmelfarb said in the letter. Then, on Monday, a man who had been staying on the 50th floor arrived at the hotel to claim his belongings. Unaware of the case against Mr. Higazy, he complained that the aviation radio he had left in his room was missing, the letter said.

Federal agents verified that the radio that was supposedly found in Mr. Higazy's safe actually belonged to the other hotel guest, a pilot. Prosecutors revealed no more information about him.

On Wednesday morning, the case fell apart completely. Agents reinterviewed the hotel employee and he said he recalled finding the radio on a table in Mr. Higazy's room, not in the safe, the letter said.

The pilot had had no interaction with Mr. Higazy, the letter said, and it was not known how the radio got into his room.

So what Judge Maas called a ''very strong case'' last Friday was no case at all on Wednesday.

While Mr. Higazy admitted to no ill will yesterday, his lawyer said that during one interview session with F.B.I. agents, Mr. Higazy was intimidated and frightened, and subjected to ''unrelenting pressure'' during which he may have made confused or false statements about the radio. In Federal District Court last week, Mr. Himmelfarb said Mr. Higazy had admitted that the radio was his and had told agents three different versions of how he had acquired it.

Mr. Dunn said he had been excluded from that interview, and Mr. Higazy said he was unsure what he told the agents. ''I'm outraged,'' Mr. Dunn said, adding that there have been no apologies from law enforcement or the hotel.

Kathy Sheppard, a spokeswoman for Hilton Hotels, which owns the Millenium, said yesterday, ''The matter is under investigation and we are cooperating fully with all the authorities involved.'' She declined to answer questions.

Mr. Higazy, however, was effusive. He said he had not been allowed to speak to anyone or use the telephone for most of the month he was in jail, so when he learned on Wednesday night that many old friends had offered help and money, he wept. ''I'd like to thank all of my friends, who knew that I was innocent,'' he said.

Mr. Higazy arrived in New York on Aug. 27 with a student visa arranged through the Institute for International Education. The institute had arranged for him to stay at the Millenium Hotel for a month while he looked for housing and began his studies at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, where he was pursuing a master's degree.

On the morning of Sept. 11, he said, he felt the building shake and saw paper flying past his window. ''I said, 'Oh, God, don't make it a terrorist attack,' and then I turned on CNN,'' he said. When the second plane hit, he said, ''I got out of my pajamas and got dressed and grabbed my school ID and $100 and ran out.''

He said he called the hotel frequently in the following weeks because he was concerned that he had left his Egyptian passport in his room. In his heart, he is an Egyptian, he said, but ''America is my second home. I've never been homesick here.''

He praised two F.B.I. agents by name, and said he wanted to take them to dinner to show that he had no hard feelings about the mix-up over the radio. ''I don't blame the F.B.I. for thinking it was mine,'' he said.

Asked whether he was ever truly worried, he said: ''No. I just thought that they're going to waste a lot of time and money and effort, and they're going to realize that I was telling the truth.''